William F. Shughart, J. Fish Smith Professor in Public Choice, Publishes Op-Ed on Washington Redskins Debate and Government Priorities

Editor's note: The op-ed was written by William F. Shughart, J. Fish Smith Professor in Public Choice at Utah State University. In addition to running in the Deseret News it was also picked up by several other newspapers across the country, including the Arizona Daily Star, the Yakima Herald-Republic, the Gainesville Times in Georgia, and the Duluth News Tribune in Minnesota.

The nickname mess in Washington is actually a trivial issue

Deseret News

By William F. Shughart II

LOGAN, Utah — Members of the Oneida Indian Nation are demanding that the National Football League’s Washington Redskins change the team’s name to something less offensive to American Indians. Sportscaster Bob Costas calls the current nickname “an insult, a slur.”

Following an announcement by Dan Snyder, who has owned the team since 1999, that he refuses to do any such thing, President Obama joined the fray, saying that if he owned a professional sports team and knew that its name “was offending a sizable group of people, I’d think about changing it.”